


Renovation

by De_Nugis



Series: Renovation [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-17
Updated: 2011-08-17
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean obsesses about Sam's hands, and there is fixage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Renovation

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 6.22.
> 
> For a prompt from Deirdre_c, who wanted Dean obsessing over Sam's hands, taking off from the notable hand-cradling moment in Wendigo.

It’s not like Dean never noticed Sam’s hands before. He’d taught Sam to pull a bowstring and a trigger and tighten a lug nut. He’d watched him obsess over his homework night after night, always holding the ballpoint a bit too tight, flesh whitening over his knuckles, as though someone was going to take the pen away. And he remembers, way back before the night he carried Sam out of the fire and Sam became _his_ , sticking his own hand through the bars of the crib. Sammy couldn’t sit up yet, or do much of anything but drool and pee and cry, but his fist had fastened around Dean’s finger so tight, strong and stubborn and not about to let go. Tiny, though. Dean always thought of Sam’s hands fitting in his.

Now Dean’s hands are a fused, useless lump of meat tingling with pain, and Sam’s hand has grown huge and careful. Dean figures he’s got a right to any distraction that’s going, what with the whole being bondaged by a man-eating monster thing, so he lets himself focus on the warm supporting palm, the careful curve of thumb and fingers around his, the hollow by the corded tendon in Sam’s broad wrist. Maybe he fixates a second too long, because hours after the wendigo fries extra crispy and they’re out of the fucking woods he still feels it. Any idiot palmreader would tell him that Sam’s lifeline leads anywhere but here, that it takes off from these shoddy motel rooms, goes at a tangent from Dean. There was still a moment, back there, he felt it wrap around his.

There’s years, after that. Sam’s hands pull a trigger on Dean, tighten round his throat, choking. They save his life, over and over, till Dean loses count. They stitch his flesh, press frantic on his pulse, flip him off, clutch at his jacket when Ruby is dead and Lucifer’s rising. Dean buckles Sam’s wrists to the cot-frame, twists them in rope. Grips them, night after night after the Wall falls, so Sam’s fingers don’t go pulling Sam’s hair out or picking at his flesh or scrabbling their nails raw and bloody on the door.

 

The house is a real fixer-upper. Or maybe a please-God-let-me-fall-down-in-peace. Dean figures he’ll do what’s needed bit by bit, put his year in construction to use. Sam can sit in the small back garden while it’s still warm. Maybe sometimes he’ll see the lake, the rickety dock. Other times he’ll sit bolt upright and rigid, staring back into the Cage.

Dean starts with the windowframes. First thing a house needs to do is keep out the rain. The clean smell of sawdust and the sure drive of nails, the feel of something taking a shape that works, it’s the closest Dean’s come to hope in years.

It’s the third day in when Dean feels a warm shadow at his shoulder, opposite side from the sun. Then a hand reaches past his, traces the squared angle of the frame. Dean won’t turn around. Won’t say anything. Won’t breathe. The hand’s thumb strokes the rounded edge of the sill, catches on something, a rough patch in the wood, draws back. Then Sam’s kneeling beside Dean, wielding a square of sandpaper. He scuffs briskly, brushes the sawdust off, strokes the smooth grain of the wood, over and over.

 

They finish the downstairs in November. Sam still isn’t talking. Dean hasn’t heard his voice in a year. But he looks at Dean’s sketches and measurements, shadows him for a day or so at each new task, then joins in. Dean watches Sam’s hands busy with wrench and hammer and screwdriver, steady and competent and present, working beside his, working their way back.

The mornings get chilly. It’s harder to climb out from under the covers. Dean buys four giant mugs, a kind of housewarming, for that mammoth, essential first dose of coffee. Mugs so huge they’ll almost look right in Sam’s hands. When he sets one at Sam’s elbow, where Sam is poring over the plans for the upstairs bathroom, Sam curls his fingers around it with a satisfied sigh, a contented, articulate sound. He looks up at Dean, _thank you_ , and for a moment Dean thinks he’s going to speak. Not yet. Not yet. Instead Sam brings up his hand, lays it, still warm from the mug, along the side of Dean’s face, holds it there a minute. His thumb brushes lightly across Dean’s lips.

Then Sam’s hand drops away, reaches for his coffee. A moment later he’s grabbed a pencil and he’s scribbling at Dean’s plans. Switching sink and toilet. That’s not going to work, there’s a reason Dean put them the way he did to begin with. Dean watches Sam’s fingers smudging graphite over the paper, obscuring laboriously calculated measurements, making a mess of things. He grabs Sam’s wrist and wrestles the pencil away. He tosses the pencil, but he doesn’t let go. He can’t yet. Doesn’t want to give up the warm pulse against his fingers, the hollow between the wrist bones that he’s always wanted to touch.


End file.
